Judge Amy Berman Jackson doesn’t have time for Roger Stone’s attempt to get her kicked out of his criminal case.
On Sunday night, Berman Jackson flatly rejected Stone’s request that she recuse herself because she had said the jurors in the case had served “with integrity,” which Stone claimed indicated bias against him.
First, the judge pointed out in the six-page filing, her “very general comment” about the jurors was not in response to Stone’s allegations of bias of one of the jurors.
Berman Jackson also said that she had not made the comment outside the courtroom and that her making the observation Stone objected to was a standard component of her duty as a judge.
“In other words, judges cannot be ‘biased’ and need not be disqualified if the views they express are based on what they learned while doing the job they were appointed to do,” she wrote.
Finally, Berman Jackson dinged Stone for making the request simply because he wanted to make a story out of it to further portray himself as a victim of an unfair and partisan-driven trial, as he and President Donald Trump have claimed.
“At bottom, given the absence of any factual or legal support for the motion for
disqualification, the pleading appears to be nothing more than an attempt to use the Court’s docket to disseminate a statement for public consumption that has the words ‘judge’ and ‘biased’ in it,” Berman Jackson concluded.
Read filing below:
Flip, Roger. There is no pardon coming. It’ll be “I barely knew the guy…he worked some on the campaign, but I don’t really remember him.”
Her Honor’s decision should have been accompanied by a contempt of court citation for Stone, incarceration effective immediately.
All kind of moot in the long term, since Stone is getting pardoned. Why he flails about with all these legal gambits is puzzling. Trump’s opinion of Stone and the tribulations that led him to where he is is set in concrete. Trump is pissed because Stone’s conviction and pending jail stint represents a victory by the Deep State over one of his friends. He won’t stand for it. Stone is in a different class of persons than Cohen or Manafort, Trump will not let him languish in prison. Yet Stone keeps shoveling money to lawyers. Weird. Just sit tight and STFU, the cavalry is just over the hill.
I believe one will be coming relatively soon. Trump is chomping at the bit to grant one to Stone.
Because he’s an attention-whore.